WAS
IT NOSTRADAMUS?
My
God, what did this pundit know that eluded the rest
of us? What could he have possibly deduced that the intelligence
services of the West, not to mention his fellow pundits, failed
to see? In looking back at this screed, dated December 22,
1999, the sense of deja-vu only increases as we read further,
to wit:
"Government
officials are probably telling the truth about the lack of
evidence for any particular plot, but they are right to batten
down the hatches and sound the alarm anyway because we
are living in a state of perpetual siege. As the arbiter and
enforcer of the post-cold war order, the main financial and
military prop of repressive regimes throughout the world,
we have become the targets of every aggrieved faction on earth.
As we intervene, on a global scale, in the civilizational
conflicts of nonwestern nations which we can neither understand
nor ameliorate we are reaping a whirlwind of hatred. The
current terrorist scare more than confirms Samuel P. Huntington's
thesis 'that Western intervention in the affairs of other
civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source
of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational
world.' Given Huntington's insight, it is no surprise that
we are 'celebrating' the holiday season cowering in our homes,
afraid to get on a plane or even to venture out on New Year's
Eve."
THE
PRESCIENT PUNDIT
Okay,
okay, so if you haven't guessed already, our
prescient pundit was
me. Now, I don't want to take any
special credit, here, because certainly I was not alone in
predicting this disaster. During the last presidential campaign,
Patrick J. Buchanan had this to say:
"How
can all our meddling not fail to spark some horrible retribution
.... Have we not suffered enough from PanAm 103, to the
World Trade Center, to the embassy bombings in Nairobi and
Dar es Salaam not to know that interventionism is the incubator
of terrorism. Or will it take some cataclysmic atrocity on
U.S. soil to awaken our global gamesmen to the going price
of empire? America today faces a choice of destinies. We can
choose to be a peacemaker of the world, or its policeman who
goes about night-sticking troublemakers until we, too, find
ourselves in some bloody brawl we cannot handle."
BARRELING
TOWARD WAR
Antiwar.com's
writers have been warning of the dangers of interventionism
since our website was founded, and we have not exactly been
lone voices in the wilderness in expressing our grave doubts
as to the safety and permanence of the so-called Pax Americana.
There have been plenty of warnings; the problem is
that no one was listening. And now that we are all paying
the price of empire now that the 5,000-plus victims of
the 9/11 catastrophe have paid with their lives it seems
the people of the United States are even less willing to listen,
and, instead, are embarking on a course that could reap a
whirlwind far more terrible than anyone dares to imagine.
Samuel
Huntington's thoughtful remarks would, in today's context,
be considered nothing less than high treason, and dismissed
out of hand by the frothy-mouthed pundits as proof positive
of "anti-Americanism." There is irony aplenty in
that, but we don't have time to contemplate the tragedy and
stupidity of it: we can only look on, in awe and infinite
sadness, as the nation barrels toward war.
THE
TRIUMPH OF FOOLS
The
flag-waving blowhards among us are jumping on this as their
opportunity to get what they have always wanted: a police
state. A national identity card, a crackdown
on "seditious" or "inflammatory" websites,
subsidies for politically-connected industries, a huge influx
of cash into the "defense" industries, talk of the
draft being revived: all of these proposals are now being
seriously considered, and can only lead to the centralization
and militarization of American society. As fools drape themselves
in the flag, and get away with the most un-American claptrap
imaginable, real patriots are pilloried as subversives
and the Pentagon suggests that the
use of nuclear weapons against an invisible enemy is not
an unreasonable proposition.
THE
MADNESS
The
madness of the mad bombers, it seems, is contagious, and is
now infecting American society. Our own ayatollahs in the
media, and among the punditry, condemn any and all dissent
as proof of treason. Conservatives in general seem to have
ditched their opposition to Big Brother government in their
haste to jump on board the war-wagon, and all criticism of
Israel is now considered proof that the critic is in league
with Osama bin Laden.
ECONOMIC
MELTDOWN
Meanwhile,
the American economy is going into terminal meltdown, as the
loss of confidence that followed the WTC attack is exacerbated
by the US government. Lew
Rockwell has written eloquently of how "the government
has compounded the destruction wrought by the terrorists,
and added to the economic miseries of the moment." But
these people have only just gotten started: before they're
done, not only the economy but also the US Constitution will
be in shreds.
REPUBLIC
VERSUS EMPIRE
Yes,
don't say we didn't warn you. This site was founded on the
strength of the proposition that we can't have a Republic
a government that is strictly limited and also have
an empire on which the sun never sets. In contemplating what
lies before us I am haunted by a quotation from the Old Right
polemicist Garet
Garrett, who wrote:
"Between
government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional,
representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire
on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must
forbid the other or one will destroy the other. That we know.
Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people."
CASSANDRA'S
CURSE
I'm
afraid, however, that those who saw this coming will become
victims of what I call the Cassandra Complex. Cassandra,
in Greek mythology, was the daughter of King Priam and
Queen Hecuba of Troy. Loved by the god Apollo, Cassandra was
granted the gift of prophecy, but when that love went unrequited,
the sun god turned on his beloved by making the gift useless:
her prophecies would be accurate, but no one would believe
them. It was Cassandra who warned the Trojans of that infamous
wooden horse, but her prediction that Greeks bearing gifts
would be the Trojans' undoing was dismissed as the ravings
of a madwoman.
AMERICA'S
TROJAN HORSE
When
the Trojan horse of imperialism and interventionism entered
the American consciousness, the dire predictions of our American
Cassandras myself included were ignored and even suppressed,
denounced as not only "extremist" but, now, even
traitorous. Apollo's revenge will be America's undoing, and,
as the gods look down, the Fates spin their threads, entangling
us all in their machinations
.
ON
THE BRINK
What
is truly depressing, my friends, is that if the choice were
put to a vote of the people today, Empire would win out. This
may change, in a few weeks, a few months, a few years but
right now, in the rush for vengeance, the American people
seem to have forgotten their heritage. One more WTC-like catastrophe,
one more terrorist attack, is likely to push us into martial
law and the indefinite suspension of what is left of our
liberties. When that day comes, just remember this: you had
plenty of warning and there's no turning back.
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